Temperature dependence of COVID-19 transmission

Alessio Notari

As a final remark, our findings can be very useful for policy makers, since they support the expectation that with growing temperatures the coronavirus crisis should become milder in the coming few months, for countries in the Northern Hemisphere. As an example the estimated doubling time, with the quadratic fit, at the peak temperature of 7.7 • C is of 2.6 days, while at 26 • C is expected to go to about 4.6 days. The linear fit gives a smaller effect: a doubling time of 2.8 days (or 3.1 days) at 7.7 • C and a doubling time of 4.1 days (or 4 days) at 26 • C, using the estimate from the base (or the extended) dataset. For countries with seasonal variations in the Southern Hemisphere, instead, this should give motivation to implement strong lockdown policies before the arrival of the cold season.